China… New Writing on the PRC’s Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries 25 Oct 2022 As Xi Jinping confirms his position as China's disciplinarian helmsman, we return to a regular theme of this blog: the early years of the People's Republic of China. Mao's role…
Borderlands… From Liberation to the Great Leap Forward: Ethnic Koreans and Assimilation in Northeast China, 1945-1962 1 Jul 2021 Today I completed a new research article on the broad subject of Maoism's impact on ethnic Koreans in northeast China. The work is slated to appear next year as a…
Borderlands… Memory and Reproduction: A Study of 1980s Chinese Ethnic Korean Revolutionary Narratives—Yun Il-san’s The Roaring Mudan River 15 Jan 201915 Jan 2019 The Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies recently published a new and very exciting paper by two Chinese scholars focusing on an area of great interest to me, and hopefully…
Art… Walls as Multivalent Icons in Early People’s Republican Cartoons, 1946-1951 13 Apr 2018 The rise and ultimate victory of the Chinese Communist Party in the Chinese civil war, and Mao's galvanizing intervention into the Korean War, was accompanied and supported by a wave…
American Foreign Policy… New Book Reviews: Espionage in Republican China, and Britain’s Role in the Korean War 30 Mar 201830 Mar 2018 My two new book reviews engage with the intelligence history of two chaotic decades in China, and the British role in the Korean War, respectively. Review of Panagiotis Dimitrakis, The…
Borderlands… Questioned Liberators: Guerrilla, Mobile, and Base Warfare in Communist Military Operations in Manchuria, 1945-1947 11 Oct 201711 Oct 2017 The years from 1945-1947 were a complex transitional period in the development of Chinese Communist military, political, and diplomatic strategy. While not yet facing the dilemmas of transforming wholesale an…
Borderlands… Border Consolidation in Liaoning: From Chen Yun to Xi Jinping 6 Feb 2017 For presentation at Leiden University lecture series "Borders: Life on the Edge of Area Studies", 28 February 2017: For the Chinese Communist Party, the northeastern province of Liaoning today inhabits…
China… Writing the Early Postwar: White and Jacoby’s _Thunder Out of China_ 2 Aug 20163 Aug 2016 Foreign correspondents are crucial conduits for insights into contemporary East Asia. As I've learned from my conversations with various bureau chiefs, stringers, and greybeards in the region, there are few…
civil war… Stalinist Modes of Violent Power Consolidation 21 Oct 201521 Oct 2015 Last week the student discussions in my "Mao and Modern China" module at Leeds University centred on the old dichotomy between violent coercion and persuasive communication in the early years…